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xBlog → Collaboratory

As you probably know, XPLANE is now Dachis Group. We are integrating everything as the year closes out — xBlog included.

On the heels of our post celebrating 4,383 days online (that’s 12 internet years!), I want to let everyone know that we’ll be importing key posts into Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog, and we’ll continue publishing our thoughts and work on visual thinking there. In fact, my first post went up yesterday and other XPLANE alumnus have started blogging there as well.

We won’t be transferring all 8,333 xBlog posts. So many of them are outdated and linkrotted. But we will make sure key posts redirect to their new homes on the Collaboratory and all other posts don’t 404.

It has been a wonderful, amazing, enlightening ride here at xBlog, from hand-coding it starting in 1999, to embracing the first release of WordPress .7 in 2003, to today — a world where blogs are more than commonplace — they are ubiquitous. I don’t know that I could give a better rundown than I did for last year’s 11th anniversary, so if you want a trip down xBlog’s memory lane you can read it here.

Blogging has been core to me and XPLANE for a long time and we’re not going to stop. I truly hope XPLANE’s fans and xBlog’s readers will continue to follow our work as Dachis Group. We’ll still be doing that visual thinking thing, just as we have been for all these years, only now we’ll be bringing to it many more people and businesses.

So on behalf of xBlog… so long, and thanks for all the links.

See you at the Collaboratory.

Cheers,
Bill Keaggy
November 19, 2011




Xylem: Let’s Solve Water

Here’s a new video Dachis Group made for for Xylem:

The demand for water will increase 5 times by 2050 but the amount of fresh drinkable water on Earth always stays the same. Xylem finds ways to efficiently save, protect and control water. It’s what we do every day. It’s why we share a goal of solving the world’s water challenges…one drop at a time.

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Also published in Food & drink, Movies & motion, Sustainability, XPLANE news | comments (1)



What does a socially optimized business look like?

Today we are happy to publish a new Dachis Group XPLANATiON about Social Business.

What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.


Click to download the PDF.

Read more »




XPLANE is now fully integrating into Dachis Group

Hello,

I’got some exciting news to share. I’m pleased to announce that XPLANE is now fully integrating into Dachis Group.

As you know, Dachis Group acquired XPLANE in April of 2010 as part of the company’s vision of building the world’s best social business design consultancy.

Over the past 18 months we’ve worked to integrate the value and heritage of the XPLANE services into the broader offerings of the Dachis Group as well as offer the Dachis Group value and services to XPLANE’s clients with the overall goal of delivering a unified approach and experience to all of our clients.

Read more »

Posted by Parker Lee on Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 10:05 am
Also published in Infodesign & graphics, Social business, XPLANE news | comments (1)



The concept eludes me (part 3): Self doubt

So far this series has been unoriginal and had a few bad ideas, but today’s installment can be especially crippling: self doubt. It usually goes something like this: “I can concept this, but I can’t execute it. I don’t have the requisite skills to pay the forthcoming bills.”

The fear of undertaking a project beyond your abilities is enough to stop you in your tracks while concepting. And it’s especially frustrating because the idea you have may be great. It may be inspired. You can see it, right there, clear as day in your head. But getting it out in the real world? That isn’t your forté. And that’s a bummer.

Read more »

Posted by Drew Crowley on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 9:25 am
Also published in Creativity, Graphic design, Life | comments (1)



Visual Thinking School: Do-overs

Back in June the federal government unveiled a newly designed visual to replace the Food Pyramid many of us are familiar with. Rather than simply showing us what each food group is, the new graphic also is meant to give us an idea of proper portion control of each food group. Shaped like a plate (and cup for the milk) the graphic is very simple, especially when held in contrast with the food pyramid.

This change prompted us at XPLANE | Dachis Group to take a look at a few other long-standing charts, graphics and diagrams and ask whether they could use a bit of sprucing up.

Read more »




Meet the Social Business Index

Noise.

The web’s full of it. And social has dramatically increased it because so much can be said so quickly and so easily, from anywhere, by almost anyone. But social connects us — and a lot of us think of it as a purely personal experience. Friend to friend, person to person, fame to fan, etc. As individuals we struggle to make sense of it all as we juggle Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts, friends, contacts, comments and feeds.

Read more »




10 key tips for making movies in Keynote

Our earlier post on making informational videos in Keynote generated some questions, so I’ve rounded up a few tips.


A Keynote video we made for Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School.

1. On goals and purpose
Over the last few years we’ve found that in some cases, a Keynote-authored video is what you might call the “good enough” solution. Full animation can be complicated, expensive and time-consuming. Don’t get me wrong — we love it, it’s beautiful, but it’s not always needed. Keynote lets you create and edit presentations, make things move, is ridiculously easy to learn and exports to Quicktime, including easy exports for iPhone. That’s the “good enough” part — but of course technology isn’t all you need. You better have a good story and visuals too.

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Also published in Movies & motion, Presentations, Software & technology | comments (7)



Did you know there’s a new ‘Did You Know?’ video?

Once again XPLANE | Dachis Group has teamed up with Dr. Scott McLeod of Iowa State University to create a thought-provoking video. The brand-new “Iowa, Did You Know?” kicked off the School Administrators of Iowa Conference yesterday morning. This DYK video contrasts the world’s exponential growth in technology and learning with Iowa’s struggles to best prepare K-12 students for this new future.

Intended as a forceful wake-up call for Iowa educators, the video stresses the importance of an educational approach that moves away from “low-level mental work” and towards stronger development in critical thinking and problem solving.

Read more »

Posted by W. Scott Matthews on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Also published in History, Internet, Leadership, Learning, Mobile, Movies & motion, Software & technology, XPLANE news | comments (0)



Bring history to life with visual thinking

This is a guest post by Jeff Manuel, Assistant Professor of History at SIUE.

As a history professor, I work with words. Pages and pages of them, in fact. Words to write, words to read, words to speak. I use pictures and images too, but they usually play second fiddle to the words. So it was challenging and humbling to visit XPLANE | Dachis Group for a recent Visual Thinking School (VTS) because it forced me to think deeply about using visual thinking to communicate history. It was also enlightening, as I came away convinced that history instructors should incorporate more visual thinking tools into our classrooms.


We started by creating empathy maps for students and teachers to help us get into their heads regarding what they’re seeing, hearing, thinking and doing while in class.

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Also published in History, Learning, Presentations, Sketching & illustration, Visual thinking, Visual Thinking School, XPLANE news | comments (2)



Kronos video

Sample visual
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.

Azure poster

Sample visual
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.

Tweets & Flickrs